Giants of Japanese media eye digital salvation FEATURE 09/17/2010

Giants of Japanese media eye digital salvation

FEATURE

09/17/2010
TOKYO — With huge circulations, loyal readers and a tireless reporting culture that runs around the clock, Japan’s newspapers have defied many of the woes that have beset their western print peers.

But a crisis of shrinking revenues is looming as Japan’s dailies scramble to make their online editions profitable, attract a new generation of readers in an aging society and avoid the woes of US and European titles.

Advertising spending has plunged 42 percent in the past decade, exacerbated by a global downturn that hammered the Japanese economy, threatening to make negative headlines out of print media’s bottom lines.

“Newspapers are seeing a crisis coming,” said Shinji Oi, professor at Nihon University.

“Japan has yet to see the major newspaper bankruptcies and financial troubles that we have seen in the West. But newspapers’ business fundamentals are definitely deteriorating,” he said..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100917com3.html